Jay Mātenga

Jay Mātenga

Dr Jay Mātenga is a contextual theologian of Māori heritage. He serves as the Executive Director of the World Evangelical Alliance’s Mission Commission and Opinion Editor for Christian Daily International. Jay has served cross-cultural missions for over 30 years, with missionary deploying agencies and missions alliances. Jay's passion is to strengthen participation by the people of God in the purposes of God towards co-creating new creation for the glory of God. Jay keeps a blog and other contributions archived at https://jaymatenga.com.

Articles by Jay Mātenga

  • Co-creating safety
    Oceania Opinion

    Co-creating safety

    By Jay Mātenga

    Safety is central to our wellbeing. Our sense of safety has an immediate impact on our physical health, emotional stability, social harmony, economic viability, psychological growth, as well as our spiritual maturity. Even the slightest glance at the news or social media today reveals a dramatic increase in instability resulting in a corresponding decrease in a sense of safety, psychologically if not physically.

  • Yielding to gravity (by Jay Matenga)
    Oceania Opinion

    Yielding to gravity (by Jay Matenga)

    By Jay Mātenga

    The text for this month is 1 Corinthians 1:9-10 (NLT), “God will (keep you strong and free from blame), for he is faithful to do what he says, and he has invited you into (koinonia) with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. I appeal to you, dear brothers and sisters, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, to live in harmony with each other. Let there be no divisions in the church. Rather, be of one mind, united in thought and purpose.” 

  • Damaging detachment (by Jay Matenga)
    Oceania Opinion

    Damaging detachment (by Jay Matenga)

    By Jay Mātenga

    Galatians is widely accepted as Paul’s first epistle. It emerged in response to a radical disruption of the Jewish faith following the resurrection of Jesus. Almost 2,000 years on, we can too easily gloss over the shocking nature of this shift, which became a schism, and then an entirely independent religion with unbroken spiritual roots in the history of Israel and Judaism.

  • Nil by force: a word on militaristic tropes in missions
    Oceania Opinion

    Nil by force: a word on militaristic tropes in missions

    By Jay Mātenga

    I think missions influencers resort to militaristic tropes because, when it comes to the sharing of our faith, whether local or cross-cultural, we have a motivational problem. To get more believers ‘committed’ to evangelism, ministry, and missions, influencers too easily twist Scripture to promote a militant activism, casting the ‘great unwashed’, ‘pagan’, or ‘heathen’ as ignorant slaves of our enemy (sin, the powers of darkness, and the Devil) needing to be rescued (by force, if necessary, e.g.

  • Whose side are you on?
    Oceania Opinion

    Whose side are you on?

    By Jay Mātenga

    I love the way Peterson’s Message Bible renders the question and response: Joshua asks, “Whose side are you on—ours or our enemies’?” and the response was, “Neither. I’m commander of GOD’s army. I’ve just arrived.” I launched my 2023 World Evangelical Alliance Mission Commission Leader’s Missions Forecast from this passage. For my January 2024 post, I’ll repeat the introduction of that essay in the hope that it encourages you to take the time to read the rest.

  • Oceania Opinion

    Antichrist

    By Jay Mātenga

    It should come as no surprise that Māori whakataukī or proverbs tend to be aspirational, even if they also contain a warning. After all, Māori are guided by a strongly collectivist values set. That which is treasured in this world is that which strengthens our relationship bonds—to one another, to our habitats, to the unseen spiritual world around us. There is no greater threat to collectivist values than that which would seek to separate or divide the group.

  • Oceania Opinion

    Toxic goodness

    By Jay Mātenga

    That suffering can be redemptive sounds utterly perverse in the ears of our mainstream contemporaries. Our secular reality (and too much theology) is so thoroughly drenched in (false) Epicurean hope that it is unfathomable to think that anything bad can ultimately be good, steeped as Epicureanism is in the pursuit of pleasure. We must not fall into the trap that God intends evil so that good might result. That is perverse.

  • Unbroken weave
    Oceania Opinion

    Unbroken weave

    By Jay Mātenga

    This month’s whakataukī (proverb) is: “Hē o te kotahi, hē o te katoa.” (“The mistake belongs to the collective.”). I’ve said before, I started life in Canons Creek, Porirua, Aotearoa New Zealand—a notorious neighbourhood in the 1970s, noted for its gang violence and poverty-related issues.